Creating a website is very similar to baking—instead of using ingredients like sugar and flour you replace them with CTAs, landing pages and so on. Yeah, it’s not as tasty as baking is during the process but in the end it sure does pay off. Continue reading to discover some of the ingredients of what makes a good website.
Recipe for a good website:
2 cups Content
½ cup Keywords
1 cup CTA
1 cup Landing Page
1 cup blogging
4 tablespoons Design
¾ cup Easy Navigation
Preparation:
We know you’re anxious and ready to just throw a website together. But slow down a second, it takes time, preparation and strategy. Yep, you heard it—strategy. Ah, that word is a bit scary but just like with any recipe there’s always some prep time; creating a good website is no different. Take the time to plan out your website, you won’t regret it.
Some of the things you should strategize about are:
- Design/layout
- Content (Type of content, frequency of content, how much content, etc.)
- Offers
- Personas
- Keywords
- Goals
Directions:
In a normal recipe this is where the steps of what ingredients to add and the mixing information for your concoction would be—instead I will be explaining each part of what makes a good website in more depth. This seems as if it would be helpful to know, right? Besides, everyone has their own way of going about creating a website so there is some leeway in the steps.
Content
The content on your website is so so important! It's like the yeast in bread - if you leave that out that ingredient, your bread won't rise and you won't bake much of anything. The content is what people are going to read when they come to your website. You need to provide helpful content that will offer answers to their questions. Your content should be inviting, personal, informative and high quality. Without it, your website is not very useful.
Keywords
A good website needs to be optimized for search engines whether we like it or not. To do this you need to ensure you have a keyword strategy already lined out. Finding quality keywords that rank for your organization or company is really important when it comes to being found online. It's like the sugar you add in a recipe to sweeten it up - and if you didn't have that ingredient, the whole thing would probably taste really aweful. Important thing to remember: don’t stuff your keywords! Having keywords is good but they need to flow naturally throughout your content. Search engines like Google will actually punish you if you put keywords in places that don’t make sense.
Calls-to-Action
When you use CTAs on your website, your visitors have a greater opportunity to convert into leads or customers. Think of a CTA as your sous chef or an employee that works for you 24/7 and all they do is attract and convert leads. Um, heck yeah. Who would pass that up? CTAs need to be action oriented (duh), stand out, and have a goal in mind all while remaining simple.
Landing Pages
This is where you hook your leads. If you’ve gotten them to this page, you almost have them! Landing pages can be tricky but when done right they are extremely effective to generating leads and making them customers. Learn how to create the perfect landing page by reading this blog post: The Best Landing Pages Use These 6 Simple Techniques
Easy Navigation
This one can ruin even the best of websites, the same way confusing instructions can ruin a recipe. Your layout can be phenomenal and your content can be on point but if your website is hard to navigate that is a major turn off. People visiting your website want to either a.) Be able to get where they want to go fast or b.) Be told where they should go. Having a site that is easy to navigate will ensure that both of those two desires are satisfied.
Blog
A blog is a great way to connect with your website visitors and to keep them coming back. Not to mention, blogging consistently is a great way to rank for search engines and show them and your leads that you are up to date on the industry you are in and want to offer helpful information. If you are willing to create great content and you keep publishing it, you will keep gaining leads that will turn into customers.
One thing to note is that unlike baking, you are never truly finished. A good website is constantly updating its information to stay relevant.
Tip: Presentation, presentation, presentation. My mom engrained this in my brain as I was growing up—little did I know it would be advice for more than just your cooking. As always, just like you would bake a cake and make it “pretty” make your website visually appealing as well! It's the icing on the cake, if you will!
Now that you know some of the key ingredients to what makes a good website, tie on your apron and get to mixing, um, I mean creating those awesome websites. Enjoy!
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